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£79m Archer2 Supercomputer Will be Housed in Edinburgh

The UK Government has revealed that the University of Edinburgh will become home to a new £79 million national supercomputer.

It will replace the university’s current £43 million Archer supercomputer, which was built in 2013 and can deal with one million billion calculations per second.

The new Archer2 model, detailed in the UK Government’s spring statement this week, will be five times faster than the UK’s current capabilities.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond said: “Technology does not stand still, and neither can we. So, to maintain the UK’s technological edge, we will invest £79 million in ARCHER2, a new supercomputer to be hosted at Edinburgh University.

“I’m told that it’s up to five times faster than the current generation, capable of a staggering ten thousand trillion calculations per second. And I am told that, with the right algorithms, it might even be able to come up with a solution to the backstop.”

Archer2 is part of a £200 million investment by HM Treasury in research and technology.

Paul Clark, director of High Performance Computing Systems at the university, said: “Most other industrial nations invest heavily in their supercomputer infrastructure.

“Supercomputers are used across many sectors, they generate jobs, they generate innovation and new science. Making sure the UK is at the forefront of that is critical.”

Backing Britain to remain a leader of the technology revolution that is transforming the global economy is a key pillar of the UK Government’s plan, said Hammond.

The Government has also committed an additional £7 billion to science and innovation, in an effort to progress towards its target of total R&D spending reaching 2.4% of the economy.